D4: Expansive achievement array and tracking system please

General Discussion
1

Next to truly enjoyable gameplay, which includes things like character and itemization depth, lore and content replay ability, and all things related to game development in such aspects, one of the most (if not the most) enjoyable aspects of a game is achievements. I love to spend my time hunting for new achievements of various kinds, ones which are straight grinding, discovery and exploration, skill based, team based, speed based (or score based, I.e. kills etc.). My main anecdotal instance of such a system is WoW, which starting in Burning Crusade include achievements, which entailed cosmetic rewards and titles for rewards. Diablo 3 has this, but nearing the end of the completion of every available achievement in the game I feel that the ceiling is too low.

The main beef I have is that the achievement system is not expansive, doesn’t feel like it goes on for ages, doesn’t feel inexhaustible. This made me realize that a good achievement system feels in some way infinite, boundless, and endless in its appeal; but just as importantly, it must also feel completable, achievable, and in the end complete and meaningful. Recently playing Starcraft 2 with its 10th anniversary achievements in single player, I felt a sense of completion in doing all campaign achievements in both regards: there is a sense of resolution and completion in doing all achievements, and there is a sense of expansive array of options based on skill level, plus new achievements added in after the fact - there’s an idea I can get behind!

The idea I’m looking for in practice in a game is one very much like WoW in that you could complete a certain round of achievements within 2-3 years - the lifetime of an expansion pack - and have little events added in that give a bit more to go after, like seasonal holiday events in WoW (speaking in terms of the idea, not necessarily holiday themed). This gives the chance to continually add content which is outlined to some degree by the achievement system. This system at its core provides artificial challenges and incentives to help players engage, gives a sense of why to play as well as what to play. Some players either never focus on achievements or just do the content for its own sake, but I love the thrill of hunting for achievements over the long term, and what keeps me coming back to a game.

For Diablo 4 particularly, I think that there should be consideration given, in addition to examples of categories previously mentioned, to zone-based achievements and story-based achievements. There should be various types of these per zone, skill-, group-, speed-, grind-based, etc. but tailored around areas of best replayability over time. One aspect of Diablo 3 that isn’t appealing to me is monster hunting, finding certain kinds of rare or champion monsters (then you have to do it again in hardcore…). This is at best one of those incidental things you do along the way, and there shouldn’t be much need to hunt them if the game is running properly, and I just don’t think it is that much of an achievement. It is grind-based, but mostly looking for the right mob types. I can understand more the hunting of truly rare monsters, but there are so many in Diablo 3, who serve no other purpose it seems than for these achievements. They drop no gear, play no role in the storyline or environment, and just not great overall.

There is lots of space to have conversations about D4 achievement system possibilities, but the most significant Fix to the system itself is to ENABLE ACHIEVEMENT TRACKING. This is such a pain to not have, and I truly cannot understand why the UI cannot be made to let players track achievements as in WoW. Grinding achievements especially are so tedious without this feature. Ideally there would be something like dual-monitor support (no idea if this is feasible) that allows users to set up a permanent stat panel or open inventory that they can access only when a menu is open (so they don’t click off screen). Again no idea how that would work but something we could have that allows us to track achievements in game would be amazing.

Those are my thoughts, I’d love to hear yours. How would you want to make the D4 achievement system the best possible?

2

Achievements are fine. It is kinda fun to know my stats such as time played, monsters killed, etc. So why not throw some achievements in with little extra work and make many people happy?

The one thing I will say, is please oh please don’t ever just give the best gear when you do a few fairly easy achievements. Just leave that out of the achievements. Make them for people who enjoy doing them for the sake of doing them. Maybe even provide some little cosmetic bonus. But do not do anything like the Haedrig’s gift stuff in Diablo 3.

3

I think that achievements have been and should always be more about bragging rights and a sense of completion then about gear. Definitely NOT a fan of gear or power rewards for achievements, but something like in WoW getting the Grand Marshal/High Warlord title or Gladiator in season feels like a big accomplishment, and I’d like to see more of this.

One thing I do not want is just more of the same kind of achievement - kill 100 monsters, then kill 1000, then 10000 as nauseum. We need to mix up what we are achieving or it just feels senseless. If it’s a big and faraway grind target, like 10k bounties in D3 (which still feels like a crazy amount), that isn’t a bad thing - but by endless or infinite I don’t mean an ever-scaling thing like this. This is the non-rewarding side of what Paragons are to D3, which most people thing is broken as a form of power creep.

1 Like
4

Agreed on all accounts. I am not very familiar with WoW or that system, but it sounds maybe somewhat like Destiny 2. I am on board with earning titles for those who want to, but it should never be for power or something essential, which you nailed.

5

I think achievements should me meaningful. Open 10000 chests and alike is a very stupid and dull kind of achievements.

1 Like
6

I could see some mix between achievements, paragon and season journey.

First of all, normal achievements should exist outside of the system described below, similar to what you see in D3, WoW, Starcraft 2 etc. Those are fine, and have no gameplay impact. And it can have some of the more fun/weird achievements that wouldnt fit in a gameplay-altering system.

However, there could be something like a season journey, D3 style, but with a lot more achievements/challenges.
It starts easy, as in D3; Reach max lvl, finish a key dungeon, liberate a camp in the overworld etc.
Expanding throughout the end-game. Finish all key dungeon locations. Kill Boss X in all its different affix versions. Liberate all camps in the overworld. Complete a tier 10 Key dungeon without dying. Kill all uber bosses. Solo a world boss. Reach maximum survival bonus. Kill Boss Y with no gear equipped. Etc.

Main difference would be;
Each of these achievements/challenges gives you 1-5 paragon lvls. Which can then be spend on various bonuses.
The journey has a hard cap. No endless paragon lvling!
Maybe you can get to paragon 500, if you do every single challenge. Maybe maxing the bonuses you can spend points on, would require 1000 points; so you have to actually choose which bonuses to get.
Some challenges could be account-wide, most would be per character.
Like, ‘lvl all classes to max’ could give 5 paragon points for all chars on your account. ‘Finish a tier 10 key dungeon with no deaths’ might give 3 points for the specific character who did it (and could of course be done on multiple chars).
While most of the achievements/challenges would be the same from season to season, like with D3 season journeys, some challenges could be new each time.

Would be way more enjoyable than XP farming imo.

7

I love this idea! A mix of base game achievements which grow over time, character progression avenues, and seasonal time-bound achievements

8

Ah, “Achievements”…

I won’t nark on the achievement system of games because apparently there are folks who like the systems for what they are.

I personally, find most achievement systems to be an absolute bore. If I grind for hours, days, weeks, months, years, I want it to mean something.

What I would love to see is that some achievements give bonuses to the game (yes I know some folks don’t like this idea) and others give cosmetics. Personally, I don’t care about cosmetics. I never cared about them in D3 “except” for the wings you get from mastering all of the set dungeons. THAT is what an achievement is supposed to look like. I spent each season doing a different class, focusing on getting all of the gear to run the dungeons. It took what, 6-7 seasons? Point is, it took a long time and the wings you get from it look amazing. Well worth the effort put in. Outside of that, the flag/banner cosmetics, I don’t care. Pets, don’t really care, etc. Why? Because they don’t do anything to help the end game.

I’m here to play the game and be “rewarded” for time played. I was one of the misfortunate souls who had to drudge through the infamous Error 3006 on the day of D3 launch. I was there when Patch 2.0 erased all of my hard work from the previous 2 years. I’m still playing off and on, 8 years later. Point is, I’ve got a stupid amount of hours logged with D3 with a whole bunch of achievements that I honestly didn’t even know I got because they buzzed by so fast I didn’t even notice it.

Other games do achievements the same way as D3, a feather in the cap, or a pat on the back. It cheapens the game for those of us who don’t care and makes a lot of unnecessary work for some dev who probably hates their job. What I think a lot of us need, which is simply human nature, is to work for progress and be rewarded for it. Achievements shouldn’t be a necessary component to gameplay, but it should be an attractive alternative mechanism to the gameplay.

Gameplay Bonuses

What I honestly want to see is one of two things:

  1. Remove achievements altogether.

Keep the important stats, remove the kudos. I don’t think many people care that they killed Diablo 20 times to get a boring icon. Maybe I’m wrong.

  1. Make the achievement system reward players for longevity gameplay.

To give some ideas on how this would work, let’s run through a few scenarios. Don’t nit-pick the ideas, they are purely here for examples:

For every x amount of gold picked up, you get x% of gold find permanently. This type of achievement could be done over time, or someone could focus heavily on gearing up for gold runs to increase their gold.

For every x high-quality magic find item, give permanent x% to magic find. I don’t know if MF stats have been re-added to D4, but the more “good” stuff you find, the faster you’ll find it.

For every x successful block, get x% permanently added to block chance. This would allow a tanky type of character to focus on better defense.

For every x successful crit, get x% permanently added to your overall crit (either cap it or exponentially reduce the x% for each milestone)

For every times x skill has killed an enemy, get x% bonus to damage of that skill.

Conclusion
What I would like to see with the achievement system, is something that is as relevant on the day of launch, as it is 8 years later. The longer you play, the more you get rewarded to help with “end game” content. Make some achievements (gold find, mf etc) reward to infinity, make other achievements cap but set the caps really high so that a lot of actual work or focus has to be put into it.

The one thing the devs for D3 missed the point on, was that the Diablo franchise isn’t about everyone having a fair chance. It’s about rewarding those who are willing to put the time in for 5 or 10+ years and come out of it looking at their accomplishments with pride. I have a friend who made a sword-wielding sorceress in D2. She was able to defeat the ubers, wielding a sword, using nothing but the sword. He said it took him 5 years of grinding and trading for runes/gear to make it happen but the fact that he still talks about it with pride, says a lot about his personal accomplishment. Achievements should be revered the same way.

Diablo should be about the long game as much as it is about the end game, as much as it is about the beginning. If achievements helped me with the long game, I would actually start caring about them, and focusing on them. If I could look back and say “I finally killed 1 million enemies with the meteor skill, and now I get a permanent 1 extra meteor drop for free”, it would feel like the work put in, was worth the reward given. When other people see that extra meteor and ask how you got that, you can actually boast about it. Just like the paragon system scales the endgame through time invested, this could be translated into achievements and bring completely different gameplay into the mix.